The décolleté is often neglected by women. Now more than ever, as women are aging better than ever in their faces, having concentrated all their efforts there, the décolleté is showing more age and sun damage.

Getting Spa Inc. magazine written, edited, designed and printed is a result of multiple departments at the office coming together in one herculean effort. Without each of the members of our team here doing their part, there wouldn’t be a magazine at all.

Have you ever thought about what goes into the making of a spa product? In an age when consumers want to know exactly where the things they put into and onto their bodies come from, shockingly little is known about how cosmeceuticals and other skin care products are developed.

Botox and dermal fillers are injectable, non-invasive, medical treatments that are now widely available both in medical facilities and in spas. Are skin care therapists comfortable in recommending a Botox treatment for their client? Likely they are asked about Botox and dermal fillers regularly.

It is inspiring to hear so many stories of innovation and growth. And, as the association representing you, we must be sure to keep pace. So we’re starting the New Year with some renovations and expansions of our own. These are just a few of the things we have planned for 2018.

Even though sun care products are subject to increasingly stringent regulations, analysts predict that the global market for these essential allies will reach the $24.9 billion mark by 2024, mainly thanks to the many innovations that are expected to emerge in the coming years.

Summer has come and gone and we are now realizing that new brown spots have appeared on the parts of our bodies that were most exposed to the sun. Fortunately, there are different approaches that can help minimize them, or even make them completely disappear.

Long considered superfluous, masks are making a remarkable comeback to store shelves. They are appreciated for their many benefits – they smooth out the contour of the eyes, soften facial features, restore radiance to dull complexions, brighten tired-looking faces, rehydrate the skin in a matter of minutes – but also for the few moments of relaxation they provide.

It seems the body’s largest organ might also be the least understood. Subsequent experiments on cats, rats and monkeys in 1957, 1977 and 1993 identified nerves in the skin designed not to register mere contact or pain or itchiness, but to convey complicated information about social interactions.

Water is a source of youth and vitality. It is at the origin of all biochemical reactions and therefore plays a fundamental role in our organism. When our skin cells are lacking in water they don’t function as well and become more vulnerable. This can lead to accelerated aging, increased reactivity, increased sensitivity to environmental and climatic stressors, etc.

With the winter season comes unique challenges to the health and well-being of our spa clients, especially those who are undergoing chemotherapy treatment. During the winter, the body is exposed to the extremes of heating systems indoors, and cold, dry conditions outside, and the risk of catching colds and infections increases.

There are so many women like me juggling a career and a family, putting a little too much on our plate, putting one too many balls in the air. When we constantly are giving and caring for others, we deplete ourselves. You cannot pour from an empty cup and it makes you feel very unwell when you try to.

Fewer women are dying from breast cancer today than in the past. Breast cancer deaths have decreased due to earlier detection and greater awareness. This awareness is imperative, and all spa professionals need to be educated about the signs and symptoms of breast cancer, so they can recognized it.

The majority of us want to make healthier choices in the foods we eat and what we put on our skin. Buying a skin care line labelled organic or natural can be a good choice, however before you buy, it’s important to have more awareness about what organic and natural really mean....

Holistic means “whole” or “complete,” and a growing number of spas are becoming holistic in approach, meaning they choose to focus on mind, body, and spirit experiences and an environment that will appeal to clients who are consciously choosing to live a quality life.

Eyebrows play a crucial role on the face. They are very noticeable and any subtle differences in the way the brows are groomed can completely change the look of a person’s face. Brows are a feature of expression, and they are closely tied to our emotions. Shaped well, they have the power to change the overall appearance of our faces by lending balance and symmetry.

Spas have come a long way since the days of handwritten bookings in daybooks. As the services they provide and the demands of an interconnected information-saturated world increase, spas’ needs have changed. Even the smallest day spas find they need some sort of software program to keep track of everything.

After a lifetime of being told to rinse their greasy faces, spa clients might be a bit perplexed when we encourage them to apply facial oils. There seems to be a proliferation of these unique products in the past few years, claiming to moisturize and cleanse at the same time, as well as stave off the appearance of advancing age.

When Jason Culala conceived of his downtown Toronto barbershop-salon hybrid, he knew he needed a way to appeal to a low-key, low-maintenance male demographic. Original Grooming Experts, or OGX, needed to appeal to guys like him.
“I said to myself, ‘What would get me in a spot like this?’”

Culturally, we find excess hair undesirable on the legs, underarms – the chest and back for men - and most of all, the face. For some people, because of genetics or a medical condition, their body hair is thicker than most, adding to the self-consciousness, and they turn to professional hair removal services for a solution.

Corneotherapy is the treatment of the stratum corneum, or therapy with moisturizers. Professor Albert Kligman studies proved the feasibility of corneotherapy, in which even the simple application of moisturizers targeted at the stratum corneum can produce unexpected and persistent clinical effects after their repeated treatments.

LinkedIn has quickly become one of the top-rated business-to-business social media platforms on the Internet. If you still haven’t figured out the secret to spice up your LinkedIn page, you may be losing out on many different good opportunities.

Have you ever noticed those blue or red road maps on a client’s legs? Those are called varicose veins. More medical spas are cashing in on this and expanding their service menus to include non-surgical treatments for varicose veins. With more treatment options available, these unsightly veins are becoming a thing of the past.

If you’re like most spa owners, you’ve spent tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of dollars to create a facility that’s both visually stunning and an efficiency expert’s dream – and likely even more to marketing your business. As a result of this massive spending, you expect to receive a correspondingly impressive return on investment.

The thermometer drops, the wind blows and our skin sees red! In winter, sebum production slows down and the hydrolipid film on the surface is altered and no longer works as a barrier, leaving the upper layers of the epidermis - the stratum corneum – unprotected. It is weakened. More like crocodile skin than peach skin...

Over the past two years, the beauty and skincare world was rocked by the arrival of BB creams or beauty balms. BB Creams are addictive, all-in-one creams from Asia which quickly stole the tinted creams spotlight. But now, BB Creams are being dethroned by CC Creams. Exit beauty balms. This improved version offers more benefits than their older sisters...

Today, with the increasing use of medical or surgical rejuvenation techniques, aestheticians play a prominent role, providing sound advice daily to clients. With options such as peels, use of photo technologies (lasers, IPL, etc.), filler injections, and facelifts, aestheticians’ expertise and tools can make such a difference that they should be considered a....

Chronobiology is the science that studies biological rhythms. It is based on a fundamental discovery: that all living beings, including humans, animals, and plants, live according to precise rhythms influenced by external time factors such as the day/night cycle. All our internal systems operate on regular modes generally in rhythm with the year, month, or day....

Keeping your spa clean and hygienic is of paramount importance, to protect your clients and your staff. But when we think of effective cleaning products, we think of harsh chemicals and disposable equipment that are environmental hazards...

There are four major classes of molecules in biology: DNA, proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates, also called glycans. Glycans are essential components of living organisms and are widely distributed in nature. The wide variety of structures and functions of glycans is the basis of a new scientific discipline, glycobiology, ie the science of sugars.

Sunlight is known to activate biological processes in our skin that are important for our health, such as the synthesis of vitamin D. But while light is necessary for our equilibrium, over-intense UV radiation exposure leads to premature aging of the skin, also called photoaging and photo-induced aging.

It can be a pain to apply and then reapply sunscreen throughout the day, but it's necessary for skin health. Your clients will appreciate its impact on their wallets, too: prevention today helps avoid spending hundreds or thousands of dollars later on to fix damage (brown spots, dehydration, fine lines) caused by sun exposure.

Young skin is plump skin. It is described by its volume, bounce and elasticity. In aesthetics, we say it is deeply hydrated. These characteristics are due to the presence of an essential molecule: hyaluronic acid. Hyaluronic acid is found naturally in the connective tissues (skin, cartilage, cornea, etc)...

Aging is a complex phenomenon that involves several factors, both intrinsically—chronological aging—and extrinsically. The latter, however, can gradually increase the phenomenon of chronological aging. Ongoing research has increased our understanding of this process. For example, skin inflammation is now officially linked to...

The eye contour area is the most fragile area of our face. The skin in this area is extremely thin and strained, with few sebaceous glands and sweat glands.
The epidermis around the eye is approximately 0.04 mm thick, compared to 0.1 to 0.15 mm on average on the rest of the body and the dermis is less than...

As summer hit full-swing, and only two months until the projected opening date, the Bleu Spa construction site had literally become a beehive of activity. As the finishing touches were being applied to the main building, various work groups toiled away in other unfinished areas: 1) the Turkish bath, 2) new lounge construction and, 3) landscapin...

So far so good—Bleu Spa is only two weeks behind schedule, due to a period of heavy rainfall in early May prolonging the installation of the outdoor thermal baths. But as construction and design continues, the essence of the spa is emerging, while marketing ramps up and the major effort required to select the ultimate staff gets underway...

It’s a fact, life expectancy increased by 40 years over the past century. The world population is growing older, leading to more and more studies on aging. Decades of cosmetology work has sought ways to diminish the signs of time. Here are the five latest major scientific discoveries that are ...

Over the bulk of winter, the lack of snowstorms in the Outaouais region was a godsend for our contractor. By late February we were nearly halfway through construction, and still on time, thanks mostly to the weather. Three major storms missed the area. Moreover, it was a relatively mild winter, allowing for normal progression in all aspects of structural...